Simple Process Turns T-Shirt into a Supercapacitor: This latest method for turning our clothing into a battery w...

The idea of combing electronics with our clothing has been around for a while , but so far, it has produced mixed results . Nanotechnology has often been mentioned as an ingredient to add to the electronics-textile mix, to help push concept beyond mere novelty. One way to bring nanotechnology into electronic textiles is to make the textile itself into a big battery for powering our personal electronics. Two years ago, researchers at the University of California Berkeley pursued this line of research . Their approach was to weave nanowires into the textile and torely on the piezoelectric properties of the nanowires to develop power. While I have not followed up to see where that research ended up, it did seem a bit complicated—weaving nanowires into a textile sounded like a daunting task. Now, researchers at University of South Carolina (USC), led by Xiaodong Li, a professo...